Among nature’s creation, Bats are one of the most complex creatures that go unnoticed by busy humans. Dogs are everywhere, cats are beloved companions, and snakes are powerful demi-gods worshiped in temples. Bats on the other hand have an ill reputation of dirty creatures. No one seems to wonder at this amazing creation other than the scary caricatures of bats during Halloween or as a symbol like in the movie Batman. I loved to gaze at the amazing flight path a bat takes as it moves around. Sometimes, they appear to almost crash into a building or a tree trunk, but change direction in the blink of an eye just before you think they would crash. When they rest on a tree or a ceiling, they would be hanging upside down watching everything going on below. Our home had an open courtyard and long corridors that open on one side to the road, and other side to the backyard. Sometimes, I have seen bats flying through our home from one end to the other. It was very hard to follow them as they would fly fast and in an instant, it would be out up on the trees in the backyard.
My mother would always say that having bats come inside the house is bad omen. It is even a worse omen if the bat lived inside the house. We had many attic spaces that were dusty and had lots of junk. One time we noticed a bat living in such a cluttered old attic in a room that often acts as our dining area, very close to the back door that leads to our backyard. Apparently, it strayed from the tree, flew inside, and found this attic space a cozy home. It took us a great effort to lodge the bat out of this creepy space and chase it out. In fact, in order to make the bat not to come back, we had to scare it with a burning flame. My father’s elder brother, my uncle, took a long stick, wrapped one end with a rag cloth, dipped it in kerosene, and lighted it. Using this lighted stick, we scared and chased the bat out. According another family lore, once a bat sees fire, it will remember the location and will never come back to the same place. Finally, the bat was forever, banished from our home.
Another time, our entire family went to visit my elder brother’s wife, my sister-in-law’s parent’s house about fifty miles north of our home. Her father used to work in a match factory, which made the famous Cheetah Fight matchboxes. In that rural neighborhood, there was a very old Shiva temple. This temple was almost near the ocean and from inside, you could hear the sound of the waves crashing on the rocky shores. In Hindu culture, Shiva is one of the trinities, the destroyer. This temple is so old that many esoteric myths lived among the folks inhabiting this village. There is a legend that the Shiva Lingam (the phallic rock representation of Shiva) grows every day. If it grows large enough such that it rises above the height of temple walls, the Lingam can then see the ocean. If the Lingam sees the ocean beyond, a great catastrophic event will happen and destroy the world. The corridors surrounding the sanctum sanctorum of the temple were damp, dark, and dimly lit. Large, square, intricately carved granite pillars towered from ground and touched the roof that was over thirty feet above. Floor was also granite, and along the outside walls, stood stone sculptures of the disciples of Shiva and various gods, demi-gods and goddesses. Inside the dark and dimly lit corridors of the temple, thousands of bats lived and hung upside down from the dark roofs above. Sometimes they made such blood curdling noise and will sweep down from the ceiling, go from one end of the corridor to another and swing back up to hang upside down again. My mother always reminded that anyone who commits a sin, and that too a sin that would disrespect Lord Shiva or any of his disciples or devotes, would be born again as a bat in their next life and hang upside down in a Shiva temple. As I left, I felt bad for those thousands of sinners who have to spend their life inside the Shiva temple. I hope they would accumulate enough good deeds from being in the presence of Shiva the destroyer and be born again as humans in their soul’s next journey.
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